Fla. ethics panel hits Rivera

The Florida Commission on Ethics has hit embattled GOP Rep. David Rivera with 11 counts for allegedly violating state rules during his tenure in the Florida Legislature.

Rivera, who spent eight years in the Florida Legislature before winning a House seat in 2010, is already under FBI investigation, including for claims that he may have secretly financed a candidate in the Democratic primary. Democrat Joe Garcia is challenging Rivera and has made a major issue of Rivera’s repeated ethical and legal problems.

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Rivera has repeatedly said that he has done nothing wrong, but the ethics commission’s charges against him — which are civil, not criminal — less than two weeks before Election Day could prove damaging.

The ethics commission can assess a penalty of up to $10,000 per count, regardless of whether Rivera is in or out of Congress. The panel can also censure Rivera over the allegations.

The Florida ethics commission probe into Rivera’s personal finances covered a wide range of issues including: a $510,000 payment from a dog track to a company owned by his mother and godmother while he was still in the state Legislature, use of campaign funds for personal expenses and failure to disclose income in his state financial disclosure reports.

“Probable cause was found to believe that [Rivera] received income from Southwest Florida Enterprises, Inc. (SFEI) while he was a member of the Florida House, when he knew, or with the exercise of reasonable care should have known it was given to influence his vote or official action,” the commission said in a statement released on Wednesday.

SFEI operates a dog track and casino in Naples. In 2008, SFEI hired Millennium Marketing, a consulting firm owned by Daisy Magarino and Ileana Medina, Rivera’s mother and godmother, as it sought to expand its slot-machine operation in Miami-Dade County. Millennium then loaned more than $130,000 to Rivera, which he only paid back after winning his 2010 House election.

“Probable cause also was found to believe that his contract with SFEI through Millennium Marketing, Inc. (Millennium) would create a frequently recurring conflict between his private interests and his public duties as a Florida House member or would impede the full and faithful discharge of his public duties,” the commission added.

But the commission — a bipartisan, nine-member panel — did not file any charges against Rivera over his vote on a state bill affecting SFEI, saying the allegation fell outside the statute of limitations.

The ethics commission also found “probable cause to believe that Mr. Rivera misused his public position by using campaign funds for non-campaign related expenditures.”

Rivera issued a statement denying any wrongdoing, and he blamed his Democratic challenger, Joe Garcia, for the ethics commission’s findings.

“These allegations are false and will be dismissed shortly,” Rivera said in his statement. “It is unfortunate that the Florida Ethics Commission deliberately chose to play politics by injecting itself into the middle of an election after voting has started.”

Rivera added: “It is no coincidence that these frivolous complaints from two years ago — one from a major donor to Joe Garcia and another from someone who was convicted of threatening to kill Jeb Bush — were suddenly acted upon just two weeks before the election. There is absolutely no legitimate reason for the Commission to have acted now on these old politically motivated claims, which have already been dismissed by other authorities, other than to try and influence the outcome of this election for its own agenda.”

Florida state investigators looked into whether to file criminal charges against Rivera over these same allegations but declined to do so.